Part of the problem is that the government has done a poor job of mobilizing civilian forces equipped with the expertise and knowledge necessary to deliver a successful counterinsurgency strategy and some form of state building, Cronin said. As a result, the State Department and U.S. development agencies — such as USAID — lack the employees with the proper skills. For instance, there has been a shortage of people who speak Afghan languages, including Dari and Pashto. And while the Obama administration has improved the situation, Cronin says tension still exists between the State Department and USAID, and the ambitious policy objective being thrust upon them by the White House and “frankly the American public.” “There is a cultural bias in the State Department and USAID against too large a devotion of resources — starting with our people — to put into harm’s way,” he said. “There are too few of these people who are willing to go into battle zones and put their lives on the line for an issue like state building in Afghanistan, which has never been perceived as a successful state.” But others counter that quite a number of people have volunteered for the mission and that tentative progress has been made, albeit under the radar. “The Obama administration’s civilian increase in Afghanistan hasn’t received nearly the attention that the military surge has, but we’re already seeing positive developments as a result of the greater attention to the non-military matters,” said John Dempsey, senior rule of law advisor with the United States Institute of Peace in Kabul. “Agriculture has received double the resources of a year ago, and a number of American specialists have been deployed into the provinces to assist with farming. Partly as a result, Afghanistan had its best licit agricultural output in decades in 2009.” He added: “The number of American civilian specialists in the county has tripled from just a year ago, with many of these here for longer tours and in areas of the country that had often been neglected in the past.” Still, the issue of resources perpetually looms over diplomacy and development officials. Clinton for instance expressed dismay over the fact that USAID only had four engineers worldwide. “It is appalling, but the reason for that I could have told the secretary is because USAID in general does not have the money to provide large contracts for infrastructure,” Cronin said. “So therefore, most of the money gets earmarked and divvied up into smaller pots and therefore can’t pay for bigger infrastructure projects.” The lack of resources and personnel is also somewhat of a vicious cycle when it comes to the three “Ds” — with defense better funded and better able to carry out rebuilding functions in a conflict zone, and diplomacy and development lagging behind in both resources and skill. Whether the Defense Department gets a bigger share of the money pie because it’s more competent, or is more competent because it gets more money is the chicken-and-egg dilemma that’s long confounded the diplomacy and development community. Keeping Things in Perspective According to Cronin, the bigger question is whether defense leaders — from Secretary Gates to Gen. David Petraeus to Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal — will find the civilian surge credible? Do they think volunteers, mostly skilled retirees, can work well with military boots on the ground? Cronin says the fact that the military is continuing to operate “as though the surge is not a serious effort — is not as serious as we would like — is I think something that is not talked about for obvious reasons.” He argues that the plans have already been scaled back for Afghanistan. “Not in rhetoric because you cannot sell a major military effort by saying, ‘Guess what? We are going to build Afghanistan to the level of Chad.’ It is not exactly something you want to sell,” he said. “But I think the recent White House review — notwithstanding all of the rhetoric — was a further scaling back of expectations of state building.” The sheer numbers reveal as much: There are some 600 civilians currently in Afghanistan, up from about 300 this time last year, with the goal of adding another 400 — an improvement but still paltry when compared to a total projected deployment of 98,000 U.S. forces as part of Obama’s revamped strategy. “So while on the one hand … any state building in Afghanistan is ambitious, the Obama strategy is still ambitious, it is not the complete state-building effort that might have been implied by some of the earlier policy articulations, including the president’s policy review that was issued in March of last year,” Cronin said. “So if it is scaled back and if it is more focused largely on infrastructure and energy, largely on agriculture, economic opportunity, jobs and training, and it’s divided between the green areas and those areas that get cleared that you have to try to hold and build … then you have a semblance of a chance of making that increasingly stable, at least in those areas. That’s I believe the heart of the strategy.” Dempsey of the United States Institute of Peace agrees that the mission needs to be focused on what works and tailored to the Afghan people. “Simply increasing the number of civilian specialists doesn’t guarantee success, especially if security concerns don’t allow these people to interact regularly with ordinary Afghans,” he told The Diplomat. “Also, some sectors require specialized understanding of the Afghan context — for example, assisting with the development of Afghanistan’s rule of law system. Sustainable improvements in the justice sector are essential to the country’s long-term security. However, the Afghan legal systems and means for resolving disputes differ enormously from those in the West. Simply because an American attorney is a superb lawyer in the U.S. does not necessarily mean such skills will be of much use in Afghanistan — and they could, in some cases, be counterproductive,” Dempsey pointed out. “Thus, cultural understanding and considering how Afghans perceive American civilian assistance is important in the design of programs to ensure their success.” Seth McLaughlin is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

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